domdavis.com

This weekend I capitulated and turned the heating on. Not that my flat is particularly cold yet, personally I don’t mind if I have to put on a jumper and socks rather than walking around bare foot and wearing a t-shirt all day, but more because my washing and my towels are failing to dry in a timely fashion. I’ve also closed the spare bathroom window which means I’m down to airing the house through the small vents above the windows. Shame, as I’ve got used to having fresh air in the place.

The heating, as it turned out, wasn’t too problematic to sort out, however, I suspect it’s one of those things that appeals to my mind and that others would find a serious problem. I know for a fact that 2 of my neighbours haven’t worked it out yet, although this is mainly due to the way the instructions are presented. We do not have the instruction manuals that came with the heaters and heating system. Instead the 3 A5 manuals were disassembled and photocopied which means that page 1 of our ‘manuals’ has page 1 and 8 of manual 1, page 2 has page 2 and 7 and so on. Since 3 manuals have been grouped in this fashion it’s near impossible to work out what order the pages go it. Lastly, just to make life impossible for us a page is missing on programming the heating system. Given these hurdles I can understand why the others haven’t worked it out.

Given the state of the manuals I set out to find copies on the internetweb and managed to find 2 of the 3. Given the 3rd is simply for installation this wasn’t a problem. I then printed them out and read them in order, figured out how to set the panels, worked out which ones were in Zone 1 and which ones were in Zone 2 and then programmed the times I wanted them to come on. It’s quite good as the panels in the bedroom are in Zone 2 and the rest of the flat is in Zone 1 so you can have a toasty warm bedroom to wake up in (but not bother about the rest of the house) and then have a nice warm house to come home to and finally heat the bedroom just before bed time. Still need to work out what settings each of the panels needs to be on (started low, will turn them up if it is too cold) and also need to find out how much the place costs to heat. This is the first time I’ve had electric central heating, I just hope it doesn’t cost too much more than gas.